


The Same Deep Water

by tabagisme



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Blood, Graphic Depictions of Wounds, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:18:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabagisme/pseuds/tabagisme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death always catches up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Deep Water

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the tumblr prompt: "[...] Rick and Daryl are both bitten out alone in the woods some where so they say duck it and screw like rabbits until they die."
> 
> I strayed from the prompt. There is no dick. Woe. Hopefully it still satisfies. Thanks to tumblr user theotherynnep for the prompt, and to [mdashes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mdashes/pseuds/mdashes) for the beta.

Once they got the door barricaded enough to make the last of it easier, Daryl let his knees go on and buckle. He crumpled fast, slid down to the floor like his bones up and turned to crepe paper, all at once. The bite on Rick’s arm wouldn’t stop bleeding. 

“How you wanna do this?” Rick asked, after a long silence. Daryl shook his head. Each gulp of air he took down sent his chest rattling, and talking too much made it worse, got the fluid and blood leaking into his lungs to shift and unsettle. He turned his chin up, slow; gave a wheezing sigh, nodded at Rick and at the grey shape of the shotgun held in Rick's hands. His crossbow was lost and he fucking missed her.

"Yeah," Rick nodded, looking past Daryl. Looking far, far away.  
_________

"My daughter’s gonna grow up not knowing me. Not knowing her mother."

Daryl's vision doubled, greyed. He shook himself, then let his head loll back on over, let his ear rest on Rick's blood-soaked shoulder and listen to the pound of his stubborn, dying heart. He had a bite on his thigh, and another on his calf, same leg, both deep. They burned something awful, like his whole right side was being roasted, and they itched almost as bad. When Daryl gave in and scratched at one of them, part of the flesh fell open and away, and pain was so bad he wept huge, pink tears that rolled down his face and washed some of the spit off his dry lips. Rick had to hold him to keep him from thrashing too much, doing more damage. When he looked at his hand it was covered in pus and it stank like an old, deep rot.

"She's gonna have to make it without us."

"Got Carl," Daryl said, with great effort. He blinked, and it seemed like, just for one moment, the whole room was full of stars.

"For how long? God. How long? Without us around, without you -- "

"Rick -- "

Rick put his head in his hands. His voice was watery but didn't waver, not once; and Daryl thought, weakly, if he was going to die, if he had to, he was so fucking grateful to be doing it with Rick Grimes.

"Don't you get it? It was you every time, Daryl," Rick said. "You fed my children. You protected them, you loved them, and now you won't. I can't die with any kind of peace in my heart knowing you're not going to be with them. I can't."

The wall at their backs gave a great heave and groan beneath the weight of a hundred Walkers, all pressing their flat, open hands against the only body heat and fresh blood for miles and miles. Somewhere, not too far away, a cat was screaming.

"I’ll never hold my children again," Rick said, and rubbed his hand gently over Daryl's bruised and dirty knuckles.

_________

Daryl blacked out some time around nightfall. He watched the sun fall away slow, give way to the vast night with the scrape of Rick's beard against his neck, the brush of Rick's lips and tongue across his own. He groaned deeply, wetly; saw no more.

_________

Daryl woke up to Rick setting the barrel of the shotgun against his temple. The metal was cold enough to make him shiver. 

"I thought you wouldn't wake up," Rick said softly. His index finger kept ghosting over the trigger, following the curve and warp of the metal like a man gone blind. Daryl took a deep breath and then, down his chin, coughed up blood and one long, sick string of bile.

"Rick," he croaked. He could feel the blood and spit pooling, trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Fuck!"

Rick wiped his brow and shuddered, so hard and so bone-deep Daryl swore he could see the air around him quivering, like Rick was giving off enough heat to match a Georgia summer's sun. He looked at Daryl, and his eyes were wet, and his mouth was nothing but a grim, hateful line. Daryl had never seen him look so tired.

Rick lay the shotgun down between them. The weight of it barely made a sound. 

Rick wouldn't look in Daryl's eyes no more, after that.

_________

Time kept moving. Kept taking the two of them with it, though their feet were dragging. Beyond the room's single window, the sun rose up, a burning, mocking light, sent the night and all its dark and its horror to a place neither man would ever reach again.

"Don’t seem fair, does it?" Rick said, after a long, long time. He was looking at his hands. They were shaking hard, and from knuckle to tip they were damn near black with dirt and blood. "Nothin' about this has ever seemed fair."

Through the grime-streaked shutters, through the dark-veined hands scraping at the glass, the sky was cheery and a bright, blinding blue.

Daryl didn’t say nothing. There wasn't anything to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song of (almost) the same name by The Cure. I have been wanting to use it for a while now.
> 
> Also, hang out with me on tumblr, if you are so inclined! I don't bite.
> 
> http://sparklezombiefuck.tumblr.com/


End file.
